The present invention relates to an improved vehicle-mounted apparatus and the method of controlling the same. More specifically, the present invention relates to an improvement in operability of the vehicle-mounted apparatus.
Conventionally, a car audio player system, a car navigation system, or the combination thereof are known as equipment to be mounted on the moving body such as an automotive vehicle (herein after referred to as vehicle-mounted apparatus). The car audio player system is AV (audio visual) equipment also referred to as a car audio player for receiving radio or television, or for replaying music compact disks. The car navigation system guides the driver through the optimum path from the present location to the destination specified by the driver while calculating the present location by GPS or autonomous navigation, which is also referred to as a car navigation or car navigator.
This type of vehicle-mounted apparatus is attached on the dashboard of the automotive vehicle. However, since the space available in the interior of the car and the size of the vehicle-mounted apparatus are limited, the features such as a car navigator or a car audio player are formed in an apparatus and shares a single liquid crystal display and/or a single system loudspeaker so as to be switched between these two functions when used. More than one functions are allocated to the same operating switch for the respective features such as a car navigator and a car audio player.
The apparatus herein means a component that functions with organic integrity. For example, it includes the case where the GPS antenna unit and the CD automatic changer unit are separately installed on each section of the vehicle and interconnected by the signal cable.
In the vehicle-mounted apparatus described above, the contents shown on the display are switched depending on the user's selection. For example, when the car navigator is selected, a road map supplied by the car navigator is shown, and when the car audio player is selected, the display is changed into the animation display of the graphic equalizer supplied by the car audio player. Since the sound source of the audio player (hereinafter referred to as source) can be switched independently of the contents shown on the display, the user can listen to the radio while viewing a map screen of the car navigator.
Since the conventional vehicle-mounted apparatus has a single display for an apparatus, when two screens displays are required, a single display is subdivided into two screens. The function indications of the operation switches such as keys or the press buttons that have more than one functions are not differentiated by the states such as the car navigator in service, or the audio in service, but a plurality of functions are marked on the key or the location in the vicinity thereof. In addition, in conventional equipment, since the contents displayed on the screen is changed according to the function in service as described above, when the user wants to know the state of audio source while the display is showing the car navigator screen or the TV screen, the user has to access the specific screen first and then operate on that screen. Conventionally, the changeover of the sources has been made by key control, and the technique to change the source in synchronous with the operation of some mechanism, that is, a physical mechanism has not been known.
However, in the related art described above, there is a problem in that the operation is complicated because information from a plurality of systems has to be handled. In other words, since an apparatus has only a single display, in the case where the user wants to operate the audio while the car navigator screen is being displayed, the user has to switchover the screen every time, and thus the operating procedure becomes complicated.
In the prior art, since many keys have more than one function allocated, it is difficult to discriminate which action is allocated to which key among a plurality of keys, and thus the operation is difficult to understand. In the prior art, since the contents shown on the display is switched depending on the function in service, it is difficult to display information from a plurality of systems clearly because the state of audio is not known while the car navigator screen is being displayed.
In conventional equipment, though the operation of the physical mechanism such as adjustment of the angle of the panel display could be made, such a physical operation and the switchover of the source as described above are not linked. Therefore, the key operation for switching over the source and the physical operation of the panel have to be made separately, and thus improvement of the operability has been potentially expected.
With these problems of the related art in view, it is an object of the present invention to provide a vehicle-mounted apparatus that can handle information from more than one systems easily and the method of controlling the same. It is another object of the present invention to provide a vehicle-mounted apparatus that is easy to operate and the method of controlling the same.